(Feel free to critique harshly. In fact, please do.)
I
Six!
I came awake with a scream and a short descent to the floor. There was a moment of confusion as my brain sorted out where I was, and I dropped my cheek to the cool hardwood. The sensation pierced my sweat-soaked skin, and I slowly relaxed.
'Six. Sixsixsix...' My brain rattled around the numeral as it slowly dispensed of my REM hallucinations. 'Six what? Six WHITE. White. What was white? How can a number be white...?' With that question, I fell asleep again, and would forget the dream until the following evening.
In the morning, I gave only a brief wondering as to why I was on the floor before I realized that my alarm had been going off for a full fifteen minutes. I scrabbled to the dresser, pulled on clothes, and bolted out the door, just in time to catch my bus. There was a potentially deceased hobo in the front, so I moved to the back and stared out the window, trying to ignore the smell that was permeating the whole bus. My musings took me to wings. Big ones, like an albatross would have. Spread out, blotting out the sun... And oh shit, that was 7th street, I missed my stop. I jerked the cord, and hurried to the front, getting off at the next stop and running to the office.
Work was the same old drudgery I slogged through daily, highlighted by having to swap three e-mails because Tyler in the home office couldn't figure out what sort of business 'Meridian Plumbing' was. I finally filled out the field with 'Proctologist' and sent it back to him. I'd probably get a reprimand for it, but oh well. I was beyond caring.
As it turned out, I did get a reprimand, and my boss smoothly slid a suggestion that I work some unpaid overtime into the lecture. I sometimes wonder if all of this crap could have been caused by a bit of crude humor... Then I remember the players involved, and I get the distinct sensation that something wanted me walking home late, and I had very little say in the matter.
II
'Six!'
I scowled at the clock as if it was at fault for me having to work overtime. I debated mentally if two hours was sufficent, and the same little voice that had told me that crude humor would be a good idea also thought that two was more then sufficent. Again, knowing better, I agreed, and packed up.
I didn't get out of the office until 6:20, five minutes after the bus had passed. I debated standing in the cold for the next route, but did some quick math to establish that not only would it take longer to get home if I waited for the bus, but I had decent odds of having to ride the Dead Hobo Line again. That was a bit more then I could stand after this shitty day, and I started walking.
Walking alleys in a city is a bad idea. Of course it's a bad idea. Everyone knows that. But I'm male, poor-looking, and reasonably fit, so I've always figured I'm a poor target in every sense. It had never occured to me that gaining the title of 'witness' could make me a very good target. It occured to me as I turned a corner and saw a murder in progress.
Two men were fighting. One was thin as hell, with chin-length hair cut even all the way around, and eyes so green they seemed to glow. He was wearing dark clothing that seemed a bit more formal then one would think would be wanted for kicking ass. The other had close cropped hair and was taller then the other by at last six inches. Despite this, he was losing, badly, and I walked onto the scene just as the shorter man pinned the other.
"You know why I'm doing this, right?" asked green-eyes.
"I don't have a fuckin' clue! What the fuck, I don't owe anyone any money, I don't even HAVE any money, what the fuck??"
"Oh, come now. Think. Why would someone find reason to kill you?"
"K-kill? What the FUCK I HAVEN'T DONE A GODDAMN THING-"
Green-eyes silenced his screaming with a harsh strike to the jaw. I'm no doctor, but that strike popped, not cracked. I suspected there was a serious dislocation. "The girls."
This one caught the pinned man's attention. He surged up, against green-eyes' grip, and, despite his damaged jaw, snarled into his face.
"So what. I fucked some dumb cunts. Who the fuck are you to judge me. They wanted it, they begged for it, each and every one of them, and you would have done it, too!"
Green-eyes reached into his coat, and drew steel. Big steel. Guns that big had a name. 'Hand-cannon'. I squeaked involuntarily, and despite how monumentaly stupid it was, I broke my paralysis to speak. "Jesus, you're not gonna actually KILL him!?"
The pinned man responded first, tilting his head back to see who had spoke. Upon seeing me, he cried out miserably. "Save me damnit!"
Green-eyes cursed quietly, and shoved the gun barrel up against the pinned man's chin. There was a flash and a roar, and the greater part of his head turned into red juice, full of pulp, all over the broken up alley pavement.
I had just enough time to register what had happened before green-eyes was standing, moving, in front of me, and gripping my wrist. I cried out, a haunted, worthless sound, knowing that it was already too late, I was fucked, I was going to die - And he pressed something into my hand. Cold metal, smooth grips made for a hand... I looked into those toxic-waste eyes uncomprehendingly.
"Listen close." he said, in a hushed whisper. "That man commited crimes that no court would convict him of, but they were crimes all the same. He was a sinner who felt no remorse, and would have sinned again. He had to be stopped. Do you understand?"
For some reason I couldn't fathom in a million years, my mind brought up how a few video games I'd played when I was a kid would repeat the same lines over and over again if you said you didn't understand to a major plot point. The little voice suggested I say no to see if green-eyes would repeat himself. This time, however, I shut the voice up harshly. "Y-yeah, okay..."
"Good. There are millions of people like him out there. The police will never understand that they are beyond rehabilitation, and the courts will never find anything to pin on them. Despite that, they all leave a bad taste in your mouth when you hear about their sins."
I nodded, despite myself. Yeah, that made sense. I knew people like that, sleazeballs who loved being sleaze... "Okay..."
"I deal out justice to them. And I cannot be held down by an arrest."
I snapped back to reality. Oh god. Here it was. I was in the way of his holy mission and had to die. Oh god...!
It was in the middle my brain's spinning up into panic when I felt the burn. My palm suddenly felt like I was gripping an ingot of red-hot steel. I looked down, to where he was still pressing the gun into my hand, and saw instead a live coal, buring into my flesh. His voice suddenly rang out, seeming to come at me from all sides. "You are not pure. But neither are you evil. You shall have salvation."
The pain was unbearable, and I screamed. Or thought I did. I couldn't tell. There was no sensation, besides the pain. I could feel white fire traveling up my arm, up my legs, enfolding my torso, and finally enveloping my head, still locked in that scream, trying to let all the pain out through sound, and being so terribly incapable.
And just as suddenly as it started, the pain faded and was gone, and so was I. The blackness was pure relief.
III
'Six...?'
I stared at the clock uncomprehendingly, briefly wondering if that was AM or PM. There was a few seconds of blessed emptiness as I pondered this fact, then I slowly realized it was dark. AM, then. I never woke up this early. I must have gone to bed really early, too. Left alone, I tended to sleep for about twelve hours... That meant I fell asleep around - !
The recollection hit me at a rush, as these things do. I pitched over the side of the bed, and had just enough time to be thankful for easily cleaned hardwood before images of bone and flesh spraying outward inverted my stomach. I coughed quietly as I finished vomiting, then cried out shakily in horror as I remembered my hand. Oh, god, I was going to be crippled...
Except I wasn't. My hand was fine. Unmarked, even. The idea that it was all a dream only existed briefly, as I'd never heard of anyone being made sick from dreamed violence. But here I was, at home, and unharmed, excepting my acid-chafed throat. I let my mind roll over these mysteries, until it boiled down to the simplest expression of confusion known to man.
"Huh."
I eventually decided that I should probably clean this mess up, and slowly stood. I lumbered out towards the living room, heading for the bathroom, and pushed the hall door open in one jerk of muscles, before stopping cold at what I saw.
It was a nice coat, and I don't know where it came from. He wasn't wearing it before, and I hadn't seen it around the alley. Dark shades, not quite black, maybe a distant cousin to brown. It looked good on top of his formal-ish clothes. He turned slightly to look at me, away from the window, and the faint movement kicked up a bit of dust, as if he hadn't moved for quite some time. Those neon green eyes locked with mine, and I felt I couldn't help but drop to my knees.
"You're awake. Good. Did you dream?"
I gibbered a shaky negative, and he nodded.
"Some don't. Most pass out, most of those dream, guess you fell in the in-between." He walked into the bathroom, and I noticed how graceful he was for the first time. His shoes made a faint click on the wood with each step, and that little sound seemed to be just the perfect accent to make him wholly perfect and unreal. There was the hiss of running water, and he returned with a bucket, filled. He set it down beside me, then straightned and pinned me with his gaze like an insect on a needle.
"You have a bible?"
I pointed to a stack of magazines underneath my coffee table. He sat on the couch, reached underneath, and pulled out the dusty tome with eerie accuracy. He opened the book with the same trained precision to a page he obviously knew well, and set it face down on the table. He stood, looked at me, nodded cordially, then walked outside.
I never saw him again.
After five minutes or so, I managed to stand. I returned to my bedroom, cleaned the mess as best I could, and opened a window to let the smell out. I dumped the bucket, tossed the rag in the washing machine, and changed out of yesterday's clothes. I went and made some breakfast, as it was now nine AM, and grabbed a coke to wash the taste of vomitus out. It wasn't until ten that I finally sat down and considered the bible.
I debated shutting it without looking. I really did. I suppose it was basic human xenophobia, that even in the middle of my own home, I didn't want to poke at the void. But I turned it over, and considered the page. Isaiah. Chapter six.
'In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another:
"Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
the whole earth is full of his glory."
At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."'
My eyes unfocused as I thought. I slowly closed the book, and set it down. A coal...
I went for a walk later that day. A bum was asking for change. I gave him five bucks. It felt kinda nice.
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